Page 24 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"Thirty days," Boradrith declared. "Full council oversight. The prince remains involved but does not lead the negotiations. Councillor Draeth will chair the assessment. Khrelan serves as the council's observer." He looked at Toren with an expression that was equal parts king and father. "And my son will remember that personal feelings and planetary survival require different kinds of judgment."

"Understood, Father."

"Good. Send the humans in. I want to tell them myself."

CHAPTER 9

*** MARINA ***

Thirty days. Not ideal, but not a refusal. Marina would take it.

Boradrith delivered the terms with the measured precision of a king who'd made his decision and wasn't interested in feedback. Thirty days to demonstrate that the alliance could work. Benchmarks: a successful food exchange, a joint scientific project, a formal diplomatic framework. Council oversight at every stage. Khrelan watching everything.

"Do you accept these terms?" Boradrith asked.

"I accept them. With one condition: I need to send a message to my crew on Ceylara. They need to know we're safe, and they need to start preparing a food shipment from the Vulcana's stores."

"Granted. Toren will arrange communication access."

Marina nodded, she'd negotiate details later. The important thing was the yes, even a conditional one. She'd spent her career turning conditional yeses into unconditional ones. This was familiar territory.

* * *

She spent the first three days working like she hadn't worked since graduate school.

The food exchange was the most straightforward benchmark. The Vulcana carried emergency stores: protein concentrates, dehydrated grains and vitamin supplements. Not gourmet by any standard, but nutritionally dense and compatible with Weredragon physiology, as Dr. Vasquez had confirmed through analysis of the biological data Patel had been collecting since they landed on Ceylara. Marina coordinated with Rowan via the Colony's communication array, walking him through the logistics of packaging and transport.

"You want me to load grain onto an alien cargo vessel," Rowan said, his face filling the relay screen with an expression of strained patience.

"I want you to load grain onto a Weredragon transport that Toren will fly here. It's not complicated."

"It's an alien ship, Marina. I don't know the weight limits, the load distribution requirements, or whether the cargo hold has environmental controls. If the grain gets too hot, it degrades. If it gets too cold, it crystallizes. I need specifications."

"I'll get you specifications."

"You'll get me specifications from a species that measures weight in units I've never heard of and that builds cargo holds out of volcanic glass."

"Rowan. You fabricated a titanium coupling from scratch on an alien planet with tools you improvised from spare parts. You can figure out how to load bags of grain onto a ship."

He sighed. It was the sigh of a man who knew she was right and resented it. "Send me the specs. And tell the prince his ship better have ventilation, or I'm holding him personally responsible for every bag of spoiled grain."

The joint scientific project was Patel's domain, and Patel was operating at a level of productivity that bordered on mania. She and Melessra had established a permanent joint workstation in the research caverns, their collaboration expanding daily. The two atmospheric variables they'd identified during Marina's first night were just the beginning. Patel's Earth data kept revealing blind spots in Melessra's models, and Melessra's local observations kept revealing gaps in Patel's assumptions. Each correction produced new questions, and each question produced new data, and the revised collapse model grew more detailed and more frightening with every iteration.

"The preliminary numbers are bad," Patel reported to Marina on the second day, her voice carrying the flat affect of a scientist delivering news she wished she could undeliver. "The collapse window is narrower than either team estimated independently. I don't want to give you specifics until we've verified the cross-referenced data, but Marina; it's not decades, it's cycles."

"How many cycles?"

"I'll have a number in two days. You're not going to like it."

"I already don't like it."

The diplomatic framework was Marina's job, and it was the hardest part. She sat in her quarters for hours, drafting and redrafting a formal alliance proposal on her data tablet. The document needed to accomplish something that most diplomats spent years attempting. It needed to establish trust between two species that had never met, define mutual obligations that were enforceable without a shared legal system, and address the fundamental power imbalance between a planet of nine billion and a Colony of twenty thousand without making either side feel exploited or patronized.

Every section raised questions she couldn't answer alone. Sovereignty protections: how do you guarantee independence to a civilization that's going to need your food to survive? Technology exchange: what's the line between sharing and dependency? Personnel exchange: who goes where, for how long, under whose authority? Resource allocation: who decides how much grain to send when your own population has needs too?

She was on her seventh draft, staring at section four's resource exchange terms and wanting to throw the data tablet at the wall, when there was a knock at her door.

* * *